The UK government makes the case for open access to science.

There's been a growing push to get more scientific research out from behind paywalls. The federal government, private funding bodies, and a number of research institutions have all adopted policies that either mandate or encourage placing papers where the public can view them. Now, it appears that the UK is considering following suit. In addition to planning to make its researchers' publications available, the country's science minister has asked Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales to advise it on how to make the underlying data accessible.

The announcements came in a speech by David Willetts, the UK's Minister of State for Universities and Science. Willets was pretty blunt about access to government-funded research, saying, "As taxpayers put their money towards intellectual inquiry, they cannot be barred from then accessing it."

Like the other bodies that have formulated open access policies, however, he recognizes the value that publishers add to research publications. Publishers both exercise editorial control—deciding which research is significant enough to highlight through publication—and arrange for peer review and integrate the advice of multiple reviewers. And the UK also has a vested interest in their continued viability. London is a major hub for the publishing industry, and Willits isn't looking to simply disrupt the existing system: "Provided we all recognize that open access is on its way, we can then work together to ensure that the valuable functions you carry out continue to be properly funded—and that the publishing industry remains a significant contributor to the UK economy."

To that end, he's interested in expanding the use of two methods that are already in use, which he terms "green" and "gold." Green means that the publishers will get a period of time where they offer access exclusively to their subscribers, after which the paper is made open access (that's how the NIH's plan works). The alternative, gold approach, would be to publish in journals that provide immediate open access for a fee, with the fee being built into research budgets. That approach is already used by the UK's Wellcome Trust, a major funder of biomedical research.

(The Wellcome Trust isn't waiting for publishers to get with the program, though. It recently partnered with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Max Planck Society to found a fully open access journal called eLife, and appointed the former head of PNAS as its editor. Just this week, the fledgling journal announced its full editorial team. The first edition is set to launch next year, with all content being released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.)

Willetts recognizes that there are some potential hang-ups with this approach. Research doesn't go out of date as quickly in all fields, so the length of the publishers' exclusive period may need to be adjusted. In some areas (Willetts cites local history), amateurs and independent researchers make major contributions, but won't have a budget for paying to make their work open access. Finally, the UK is leery of forcing its researchers into an open access plan when other countries haven't adopted a similar one. To that end, it's going to be discussing matters with US agencies and other nations in the EU.

But publications are only part of the story, and Willetts intends to focus on the rest of the research—the underlying data, things that don't get published, etc. He intends to set up a portal that will list every government funded research, and provide access to their papers, any databases they've created, etc. To make sure the information is easy to maintain, modify, and share, the UK is setting up a group that will be advised by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales.

Lest the publishers think they can wait this one out, Willetts had a rather stark warning for them: adapt, or bad things will happen. "To try to preserve the old model is the wrong battle to fight," Willetts said. "Look at how the music industry lost out by trying to criminalize a generation of young people for file sharing. It was companies outside the music business such as Spotify and Apple, with iTunes, that worked out a viable business model for access to music over the web. None of us want to see that fate overtake the publishing industry."

14 Reader Comments

Although I dislike him intensely for various toolish policies that last paragraph is something people need to carve into walls and the bases of statues. Preferably opposite the windows of the protectionist media industry.

Quote:

"Look at how the music industry lost out by trying to criminalize a generation of young people for file sharing. It was companies outside the music business such as Spotify and Apple, with iTunes, that worked out a viable business model for access to music over the web."

Modern business models laydeeez and gentzzzz not protectionist lobbying.

Not to toot our own horn too much, but I think astrophysics has been doing very well on these issues. The top journals in the field are owned by our professional society, the American Astronomical Society, and contracted out to the non-profit Institute of Physics for publishing, following what this article calls the "green" model (subscriber-only for 1 year, open access after that). 90% plus of articles are available for free on ArXiV from day one, too. Journal costs are covered by a mix of subscription costs and publication charges -- and amazingly enough, last year the page charges for journals actually went *down* due to cost savings from improved business practices and reduced distribution costs online.

So, yes, academic publishing has some major challenges -- but there do exist success stories of open access and decreasing costs. The hard part is perhaps to figure out how to scale up the success from a relatively small field like astro to the big subjects like bio and chemistry.

Although I dislike him intensely for various toolish policies that last paragraph is something people need to carve into walls and the bases of statues. Preferably opposite the windows of the protectionist media industry.

Quote:

"Look at how the music industry lost out by trying to criminalize a generation of young people for file sharing. It was companies outside the music business such as Spotify and Apple, with iTunes, that worked out a viable business model for access to music over the web."

Modern business models laydeeez and gentzzzz not protectionist lobbying.

I thought this was a NATO security secret and no government official could say anything about it.

Although I dislike him intensely for various toolish policies that last paragraph is something people need to carve into walls and the bases of statues. Preferably opposite the windows of the protectionist media industry.

Quote:

"Look at how the music industry lost out by trying to criminalize a generation of young people for file sharing. It was companies outside the music business such as Spotify and Apple, with iTunes, that worked out a viable business model for access to music over the web."

Modern business models laydeeez and gentzzzz not protectionist lobbying.

I'm a little suprised that he didn't go one step further: Showing that when the Recoding Industry started its criminalizations, Napster came along and proved them right.

This all sounds very promising, but to really make a go of it, isn't it essential to draw upon seasoned professionals who can bring to bear an estimable record of success in publishing? With any luck, those Murdoch mensch might have some time to focus on such an endeavor, no? And they're already very well established on both sides of the pond!

90% plus of articles are available for free on ArXiV from day one, too.

I thinks arXiv is a big part of the reason that Open Access is as much a thing as it is today. Its establishment and entrenchment in the physics and math communities is probably a major symbol for the power of Open Access to work without destroying the role of editors and peer-reviewers.

"The alternative, gold approach, would be to publish in journals that provide immediate open access for a fee, with the fee being built into research budgets."

That's good, but the "built into research budgets" is just window dressing. A couple of grand to get the paper out the door is a rounding error compared to the cost of your epitaxal vrooming machine. So while it is nice to see the government on the bandwagon, the real action will be the interplay between researchers and journals.

"But publications are only part of the story, and Willetts intends to focus on the rest of the research—the underlying data, things that don't get published, etc"

Again, Willetts is on the right side, but the real story is closer to earth. The "Underlying data" tends to be kept in arbitrary, weird excel files, MATLAB binaries (which generally can be read by no program, not even MATLAB) or else scribbled into lab books. Usually it's a mixture of three such methods, and the data cannot be recovered without mixing them together in manner that only one living human being knows. (At least that's how it was in every lab I worked in, and whenever I got the chance to perpetuate the problem, I took it.)

A good (but small) start, would be if the geekier scientists started posting their analysis code on Github. Not that it would be very useful without the hundreds of GB of data.

The American Astronomical Society plan sounds fine to me. Look at how the IEEE operates. Some schmucks have to peer review the articles. Yeah, I did this at one time. No pay of course. But then to publish the article, you have to pay the IEEE. They sell the journals at a profit. The papers are often bundled into a book to be sold again. Then the articles are behind a paywall.

This AAS deal sounds like a winner.

Think back to the days when there were no patents online. Look at how far we have come. It is time for these institutions to get with the program.

Spotify is mostly owned by record labels and they don't really have a business model. They just keep losing money AND artists get paid very little. Sure they've worked hard and have been different, but it's still a bad example.